where I left my bike.”
What this little joke suggests is that our memory and awareness of moral codes (such as the Ten Commandments) might have an effect on how we view our own behavior.
Inspired by the lesson behind this joke, Nina, On, and I ran an experiment at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). We took a group of 450 participants and split them into two groups. We asked half of them to try to recall the Ten Commandments and then tempted them to cheat on our matrix task. We asked the other half to try to recall ten books they had read in high school before setting them loose on the matrices and the opportunity to cheat. Among the group who recalled the ten books, we saw the typical widespread but moderate cheating. On the other hand, in the group that was asked to recall the Ten Commandments, we observed no cheating whatsoever. And that was despite the fact that no one in the group was able to recall all ten.
This result was very intriguing. It seemed that merely trying to recall moral standards was enough to improve moral behavior. In another attempt to test this effect, we asked a group of self-declared atheists to swear on a Bible and then gave them the opportunity to claim extra earnings on the matrix task. What did the atheists do? They did not stray from the straight-and-narrow path.
These experiments with moral reminders suggest that our willingness and tendency to cheat could be diminished if we are given reminders of ethical standards. But although using the Ten Commandments and the Bible as honesty-building mechanisms might be helpful, introducing religious tenets into society on a broader basis as a means to reduce cheating is not very practical (not to mention the fact that doing so would violate the separation of church and state). So we began to think of more general, practical, and secular ways to shrink the fudge factor, which led us to test the honor codes that many universities already use.
To discover whether honor codes work, we asked a group of MIT and Yale students to sign such a code just before giving half of them a chance to cheat on the matrix tasks. The statement read, “I understand that this experiment falls under the guidelines of the MIT/Yale honor code.” The students who were not asked to sign cheated a little bit, but the MIT and Yale students who signed this statement did not cheat at all. And that was despite the fact that neither university has an honor code (somewhat like the effect that swearing on the Bible had on the self-declared atheists).
STEALING PAPER
A few years ago I received a letter from a woman named Rhonda who attended the University of California at Berkeley. She told me about a problem she’d had in her house and how a little ethical reminder helped her solve it.
She was living near campus with several other people—none of whom knew one another. When the cleaning people came each weekend, they left several rolls of toilet paper in each of the two bathrooms. However, by Monday all the toilet paper would be gone. It was a classic tragedy-of-the-commons situation: because some people hoarded the toilet paper and took more than their fair share, the public resource was destroyed for everyone else.
After reading about the Ten Commandments experiment on my blog, Rhonda put a note in one of the bathrooms asking people not to remove toilet paper, as it was a shared commodity. To her great satisfaction, one roll reappeared in a few hours, and another the next day. In the other note-free bathroom, however, there was no toilet paper until the following weekend, when the cleaning people returned.
This little experiment demonstrates how effective small reminders can be in helping us maintain our ethical standards and, in this case, a fully stocked bathroom.
We found that an honor code worked in universities that don’t have an honor code, but what about universities that have a strong honor code? Would their students cheat less all the time? Or would they cheat less only when they signed the honor code? Luckily, at the time I was spending some time at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, which was a great petri dish in which to test this idea.
Princeton University has a rigorous honor system that’s been around since 1893. Incoming freshmen receive a copy of the Honor Code Constitution and a letter from the Honor Committee about the honor system, which they must sign before they can matriculate. They also attend mandatory talks about the importance of the Honor Code during their first week of school. Following the lectures, the incoming Princetonians further discuss the system with their dorm advising group. As if that weren’t enough, one of the campus music groups, the Triangle Club, performs its “Honor Code Song” for the incoming class.
For the rest of their time at Princeton, students are repeatedly reminded of the honor code: they sign an honor code at the end of every paper they submit (“This paper represents my own work in accordance with University regulations”). They sign another pledge for every exam, test, or quiz (“I pledge my honor that I have not violated the honor code during this examination”), and they receive biannual reminder e-mails from the Honor Committee.
To see if Princeton’s crash course on morality has a long-term effect, I waited two weeks after the freshmen finished their ethics training before tempting them to cheat—giving them the same opportunities as the students at MIT and Yale (which have neither an honor code nor a weeklong course on academic honesty). Were the Princeton students, still relatively fresh from their immersion in the honor code, more honest when they completed the matrix task?
Sadly, they were not. When the Princeton students were asked to sign the honor code, they did not cheat at all (but neither did the MIT or Yale students). However, when they were not asked to sign the honor code, they cheated just as much as their counterparts at MIT and Yale. It seems that the crash course, the propaganda on morality, and the existence of an honor code did not have a lasting influence on the moral fiber of the Princetonians.
These results are both depressing and promising. On the depressing side, it seems that it is very difficult to alter our behavior so that we become more ethical and that a crash course on morality will not suffice. (I suspect that this ineffectiveness also applies to much of the ethics training that takes place in businesses, universities, and business schools.) More generally, the results suggest that it’s quite a challenge to create a long-term cultural change when it comes to ethics.
On the positive side, it seems that when we are simply reminded of ethical standards, we behave more honorably. Even better, we discovered that the “sign here” honor code method works both when there is a clear and substantial cost for dishonesty (which, in the case of Princeton, can entail expulsion) and when there is no specific cost (as at MIT and Yale). The good news is that people seem to want to be honest, which suggests that it might be wise to incorporate moral reminders into situations that tempt us to be dishonest.*
ONE PROFESSOR AT Middle Tennessee State University got so fed up with the cheating among his MBA students that he decided to employ a more drastic honor code. Inspired by our Ten Commandments experiment and its effect on honesty, Thomas Tang asked his students to sign an honor code stating that they would not cheat on an exam. The pledge also stated that they “would be sorry for the rest of their lives and go to Hell” if they cheated.
